Jonathan Safran Foer page

Jonathan Safran Foer was
born in the splendid year of 1977, in Washington D.C. He was educated at
Georgetown Day School, a private high school. Around this time, he wanted to be
a brain surgeon, and one could argue that his fiction does indeed mess up your
mind. He claims to have been the tallest person in his neighbourhood, yet he is
apparently now of average height. Although brought up in all the trappings, he
was never much moved by Jewish tradition, despite being drawn to the works of
Jewish authors such as David Grossman, Phillip Roth and Bellow. When Jonathan
was a child, he would visit his grandmother’s house, where he was would be
hauled into the air for a hug upon arriving and leaving. Only later did he
realise that his grandmother had been weighing rather than hugging him, an
unconscious reflex action left over from the Holocaust. While at a summer camp
aged 8, he was one of several victims of an explosion from a botched attempt to
make sparklers. This caused some trauma for him that has affected his later
writing. He went to Princeton as a philosophy major, where he looks to have won
all the Writing Thesis Prizes. One of his teachers, and his mentor, was the
novelist Joyce Carol Oates. He won the Zoetrope All Fiction Story Prize in
2000. Jonathan called on his professors for assistance as he sought entries
from established writers for “Convergence of Birds” (2001), his homage to the
dioramas of Joseph Cornell. It was in 1999 that he made his legendary trip to
the Ukraine, on a mission to find the woman who saved his grandfather’s life
during the Second World War. He did not find her, but he did discover a plague
relating the destruction of the shetl of Trachimbrod, and the tale of a
drowning in the Brod River. And so his first novel, “Everything is Illuminated”
(2002), was born. It was a difficult birth, as 6 agents rejected it, and none
of the publishers in New York were interested when it was first submitted.
Although the novel’s main character was called “Jonathan Safran Foer”, his
journey to the Ukraine only formed the foundations of the novel. It tells of
Brod and Trachimbrod, the mad squire Sofiowka, the Kolker, the Wisps of
Ardisht, Greenwich Shtetl, and many famous nightclubs. “The Very Rigid Search”,
an extract from the novel, was published in “The New Yorker” in 2001.
“Everything is Illuminated” garnered a lot of praise, and Jonathan won The
Guardian First Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and it was named Book
of the Year by the Los Angeles Times. The movie of the novel is due to be
released in September 2005, and stars Elijah Wood. Jonathan’s second novel,
“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”, was released in 2005. It relates
9-year-old Oskar Schell’s reaction to the events of 9/11. 2005 also saw
Jonathan writing a libretto for an opera called “Seven Attempted Escapes from
Silence”, which premiered in Berlin in September. Jonathan’s brother, Franklin
Foer, is a senior editor at The New Republic. Jonathan Safran Foer has made a
short film called “If this is
Kosher” against the slaughter practices of modern factory, which he
considers to be outside of the spirit of the kosher laws. Jonathan Safran Foer
lives in Brooklyn with a Great Dane called George, and his wife, the novelist
Nicole Krauss.

First
Time Author of the Month - reveals that Jonathan Safran Foer's second
novel was to be called The Zelnik Musuem. There was also a book title on
Amazon.co.uk under Jonathan Safran Foer's name called "I'm Okay"

The
Rescue Artist – in this interview for The New York Times, Jonathan Safran
Foer reveals how he was one of the victims of a minor explosion as a child, the
shock and memory of which may have affected his later writing. It also features
a photo of Jonathan when he was a child. You have to subscribe to read the
article, but subscription is free

Something
Happened – Jonathan talks to Suzie Mackenzie of The Guardian about the same
incident